The present invention relates to the cutting of leads and particulary to an apparatus for cutting leads which has a pair of cutting blades in one of which are formed electrode coatings with excellent wear resistance and bonding strength, the apparatus being capable of checking the insertion of a lead and measuring the characteristics of an electronic part such as the polarities and constants thereof simultaneously with the cutting of the lead.
A conventional apparatus for cutting leads, which cuts off an excessive portion of a lead of an electronic part inserted into a printed board, uses a photo sensor system or an electric conduction system for examining whether or not the lead has been correctly inserted into the printed board, as described in, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 22397/1986. Such a method is performed in a process quite independent of the cutting process. The photo sensor system examines whether or not the lead has been correctly inserted into the printed board by the presence of a light transmission. Since this insertion check cannot be actually performed simultaneously with the cutting, the cutting must be conducted in a process independent thereof. The electric conduction system checks whether or not the lead has been inserted by utilizing electrical conduction, but it cannot check the insertion simultaneously with the cutting because cutting blades are made of metal electrically conductive. Since such conventional method performs the insertion check in a process that is independent of the cutting process, the overall process becomes complicated and is thus disadvantageous with respect to the cost and requirements for mass-production of electronic parts. On the other hand, conventional apparatus for cutting leads does not take into account any measurment of characteristics of electronic parts such as polarities and constants.
The above-described prior art involves problems in that no consideration is given to the simultaneous achieving of both the cutting of a lead, and checking of the insertion of the lead and/or the measuring of characteristics of an electronic parts through one step. In the prior art, these processes are performed independently.